Four Music Playlists for Labor and Delivery

Each time I’ve given birth, I’ve taken music. For our firstborn, way back in 2001, this meant bringing along a few favorite cd’s. The last few times it’s meant bringing a well-stocked mp3 player of some sort.

Since I knew I wanted to try and give birth without any drugs this time (number 6 for us), I knew music might be even more important this time around.

In my research (see this post: An Epidural Queen’s Guide to Natural Childbirth) I looked at a lot of other women’s labor playlists. These gave me a few ideas, but being the over-preparer that I am, I knew I wanted more than one playlist. And I knew I wouldn’t just want to randomly shuffle through some favorite songs during labor.So, I put together four different playlists. A few favorite songs overlapped my four categories, but that was OK.

Here, for your inspiration (because I know everyone’s music tastes are different, especially for such an important time) are my playlists for labor (note, these are all affiliate links to Amazon mp3 simply because I don’t use Apple products):

Power Playlist for Labor:

This playlist was to encourage me when things were stalled or just to remind me that yes, I can get through this.

Broken Together(Casting Crowns) More about marriage than having children, but it’s one of my newest favorites so it made the cut.

Coming Around Again/Itsy Bitsy Spider (Live)(Carly Simon) Another old favorite from my childhood. Still an accurate take on marriage and one of my favorite lyrics: “Don’t mind if I fall apart. There’s more room in a broken heart.” If that’s not mom life, I don’t know what is.

Timshel(Mumford and Sons) Another one that was significant to me during our miscarriage. The last two times I’ve given birth since our miscarriage, I’ve tried to do something that reminds me of that baby. With the iBoy I wore my necklace with the lost baby’s name. This time I didn’t, but he is never far from my thoughts when I’m in the hospital.

Push Playlist for Delivery

OK, yes, this was kind of a joke. I did not, in fact, end up listening to music while I pushed out the baby. There wouldn’t have been time anyway, because once I started pushing he arrived 3 1/2 pushes later. (I say 1/2 because my midwife told me not to push but to “Give a little cough” and out he came.)

But anyway, just for fun, here are the five songs I put on a “push” playlist:

Ring of Fire(Johnny Cash) Another joke. And, blessedly, I did not actually feel any so called “ring of fire” when giving birth to this kid. It sounds awful.

Have you used music during labor? What songs would / have you use(d)?

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Comments

I expected to have music during my labor, but also expected that I’d be giving birth at home with my whole music collection handy. There wasn’t any music playing when my daughter was born eight weeks early via c-section – but singing through one of our hymnals was one of the things that kept me sane (and kept my eyes fixed on God) during my eight days of hospitalized bed rest and Tirzah Mae’s 26 days in the NICU. I think I roped nearly every visitor into crowding around the hymnal and singing everything from “Great is Thy Faithfulness” to “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” to “Alas and Did my Savior Bleed?” to “Be Still My Soul”.

I love that you got your visitors to sing hymns with you! At night in the NICU I would sing or hum hymns to our little man. Strangely enough I also remember singing “How Many Kings” which is a contemporary Christian Christmas song. I have no idea why I sang that, but it was comforting at the time.

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Welcome! I'm Karen, a homeschool grad and homeschool mom who loves to talk about real life and real books. I'm married to the love of my life and we're raising 6 kids. I'm an INTJ, my love language is chocolate, I cheer for the Cincinnati Reds, I keep a notebook and pen handy at all times, and if I had a million dollars, I'd have a second home in England.